mousme | On explaining privilege

I keep coming back to RaceFail09. I really wish I wasn't, but it's troubling me, for obvious reasons, and not-so-obvious reasons.

I am not going to try to unpack the invisible knapsack here. I'm just thinking out loud.

Okay, so I am what the Intarwebs would consider a PWC (Privileged White Chick). So far, so good. I am also a lesbian. That makes me both a woman and homosexual. Still with me? Good.

This means that I get the dubious privilege of explaining privilege to those around me who are either not women, or not homosexual, or neither of the above. I get questions on the topic of GLBT issues all the time, especially when I start a new job/meet someone new/enter a new situation. Essentially, I spend a lot of time coming out to people, and then explaining What It All Means. Whether I like it or not, people assume that I am somehow the Official Representative of the Local GLBT Community (which is totally not the case, and I usually try to explain this right off the bat, as part of my little GLBT 101 spiel).

Clicking on a lot of links in the Epic Debate Fail Of Doom, I am coming across a plethora of posts by self-described PoCs (People of Colour), who are righteously annoyed at having to explain themselves to the PWPs (Privileged White People) who ask them for information/clarification/cluebats/etc. Some have downright been foaming at the mouth.

Okay. So I get that this is annoying/frustrating/makes you want to tear your hair out by the roots/possibly commit vehicular manslaughter after particularly stupid-seeming questions. I get it, I do. If one more person asks me if I would choose to be straight if I were given the opportunity, I may not be held responsible for my actions.

That being said, I feel that it is important for me to do this anyway, regardless of what my feelings are on the subject. Yes, it's annoying when someone proclaims that their good friend/cousin/mailmain/busboy is gay and that's totally fine with them, and it's annoying that they seem to want a pat and a cookie for it. But you know what?

They're not going to educate themselves.

It's as simple as that, really. If we, the People Lacking $Privilege, don't say: "You are mistaken in your assumption, and here's why," they are never, ever going to get it. No way, no how. I'm not suggesting that we need to deliver a three-hour multimedia presentation on the ins and outs of privilege, and spoon-feed it to them. But give them something, for crying out loud!

PWPs, myself included, are far from immune from asking really stupid questions to which we honestly don't have the answer. From my perspective, when I ask a stupid question, it's okay to look at me as though I just grew antlers (although my feelings will be hurt, I have yet to die from that particular affliction), but then I would very much like to be told why my question was stupid. It was asked in good faith, and a good faith answer would be appreciated. Even if it's an answer along the lines of: "That question isn't relevant/is stupid, and I don't have the time/energy/capacity to explain it to you in full, but some research in $Place is a good place to start."

Yes, it's tiresome. No, we shouldn't have to do it. No, each individual should not have to suddenly be the representative of $Group to which they belong. It sucks. Absolutely. Nonetheless, it's the reality of the situation, and at the very least the PWPs ought to be encouraged to move past those first tentative steps they're taking, to take the initiative and go out and educate themselves. First steps aren't enough, but if they get whacked on the head with the You-Are-Privileged-And-Therefore-Wrong-Forever Stick, then they're going to pull back into their shell and never come out again, and now it's a lost cause. First steps don't deserve a cookie, but they don't deserve a beatdown, either.

Oh, and while I can fully understand that that last paragraph is essentially an argument about tone, please rest assured that I am not trying to say "If only people had been more civil/polite/less hateful/whatever attribute you please, then this terrible misunderstanding would never have happened," because of course that's patently not true. Maybe the debate would have taken on a different form, and that form would likely have been equally filled with fail on both sides. I'm just lamenting the fact that many people (the aforementioned PWPs) are going to come away from this angry, more confused than ever, and less willing to learn.

I keep swearing I'm done with this, but then I come back and poke at it some more, so I'm no longer going to promise anything. :P

:::ETA:::

I have apparently been linked into rydra_wong's Linkspam of Doom thing.

So, dear New People Following The Fail To My LJ, I feel compelled to lay down a ground rule, should you want to comment.

Don't be an asshat.

This means no flaming, no personal attacks, no mudslinging, no outing people. Post in good faith, and with an open mind. Wait ten minutes before typing your responses, if you must. If you're still mad, then wait ten more minutes.

My friends (LJ and RL) are a varied bunch, with a wide range of experiences and opinions. The one thing they have in common in this LJ is respect of my space. I would ask that you also show this respect in your posts. (So far so good, btw.)

If you don't follow this one rule, I will ban you summarily, no questions asked.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No, dude, not oppression. Privilege. Not the same word.

My reading is that they're describe opposite ends of the same concept and, based on that reading, I much prefer to continue to talk about oppression. The rationale for this is that both of them speak to a situation that is somehow unfair, and ought to be corrected, but "privilege" presents the end of the stick that doesn't suck in that light, while "oppression" puts forward the end of the stick that does suck.

Some of the writing on privilege even goes so far as to explicitly list reasons why privilege is somehow bad for the privileged, with the reasons almost invariably tend towards not understanding what it's like to be unprivileged. You know what? I don't buy that for a second. I'd be perfectly happy never to have figured out how it feels to be profiled as a drug smuggler while crossing the border to catch a plane (with the subsequent requirement that I discard a whole mess of the gear in my bag that I couldn't check because I arrived at the airport too late to check it). I'd be thrilled if I didn't remember grade school mainly as a string of playground fights. I'd dance with glee if everyone suddenly developed an understanding of the distinctions between homosexuality, transvestitism, and transsexuality (or if my normal expectation for going en femme in public could be that people would earnestly tell me about the other transvestites in their life an a misguided attempt to show support).

If all that could be made to go away, I wouldn't give half a flying damn who does or doesn't understand what it means or it feels like. That is why I hope that talking about "privilege" is as short-lived an intellectual fad as it can be, and that is why I deliberately avoided the word "privilege" in favour of the word "oppression".

(That said, I don't feel particularly oppressed most of the time I'm just using what examples I have to illustrate why I think current intellectual trends are poised to send society in the wrong direction.)

My reading is that they're describe opposite ends of the same concept and, based on that reading, I much prefer to continue to talk about oppression. The rationale for this is that both of them speak to a situation that is somehow unfair, and ought to be corrected, but "privilege" presents the end of the stick that doesn't suck in that light, while "oppression" puts forward the end of the stick that does suck.

That's actually why I like the concept of "privilege" as opposed to "oppression" as a way of framing things, because it (in theory) allows for an examination of the non-suck end of the stick without necessarily attributing blame, or pointing fingers. It allows for dialogue to happen without the cries of "You're oppressing me!" or, conversely, "Look, I never oppressed anybody because it all happened a long time ago!"

Some of the writing on privilege even goes so far as to explicitly list reasons why privilege is somehow bad for the privileged, with the reasons almost invariably tend towards not understanding what it's like to be unprivileged.

Okay, I wouldn't go as far as to say that privilege is bad for the privileged (after all, it wouldn't be a privilege if it were bad), but the goal is to foster understanding, which I can't see as a bad thing. This is supposing everyone is in good faith, which, people have pointed out, isn't always the case.

I'm pretty sure that discussions around oppression also used to have a have a similarly non-blaming/systemic focus.

Even now, there are less semantically-loaded concepts like "marginalization" that still maintain a focus on the situations that needs fixing.

Privileges are extra bonuses some groups get, but that aren't available to everyone.
Oppression is Bad Stuff systematically inflicted on some people, based on category.

They aren't two halves of a pie chart. They are different filters for understanding a situation.

The reason to understand it in terms of privileges, is that as we get closer to equality, the privileged group loses privileges, which they often believed were "rights." 100 years ago, only men got to vote in the US. Then women got to vote, and men lost complete control of government officials. 150 years ago, white people thought it was their "right" to treat black people like animals or property. (Or both.) When the slaves were freed, they lost their "rights," which were privileges.

We can struggle for equal opportunities--but that does mean a lot of opportunities that are currently reserved for white people, won't be that way in the future. We can struggle for everyone having an equal voice in the media--which means that white people will have less of a voice.

The reason to call them "privileges" is that many of them need to go away. While we can (theoretically) get everyone good health care, and enough food to eat, we can't let everyone go first in a conversation.

I hate to say it, but you're completely failing to convince me that the concept of "privilege" has any value at all.

The examples you gave of privileges both had very clear corresponding cases of oppression. Women were being denied access to political self-determination, and black slaves were denied pretty much any form of self-determination at all. Also, your argument around universal suffrage costing men "complete control of government officials" strikes me as a rather absurd way to describe the dilution of any man's franchise; after all men already had to share their control of government with other men.

The examples I'm thinking of run more along the lines of people describing the ability to drive a fancy car without getting pulled over for DWB as white privilege. If it's the privilege that's unfair and in need of correction, then the solution would be to start applying frequent spurious traffic stops (with the occasional subsequent false arrest thrown in for good measure) to white people. Sure it accomplishes equality, but wouldn't it be a whole hell of a lot better if we looked at the oppression end of the stick, and focused our efforts instead on making DWB stops go away.

I'm quite happy to forfeit some privilege in the pursuit of justice when the system in which I have that privilege is a zero-sum game. In such a situation though, this forfeiture of privelege will naturally arise when oppression is eliminated, so we are served just as well by a discussion of oppression as by a discussion of privilege.

In the case where it's not a zero-sum game however, if we talk privilege, we're implicitly identifying injustice with the "have" situation and will be subsequently inclined to remedy the situation by changing "haves" into "have-nots". Talking oppression in this case though, identifies the injustice with the "have-not" situation and directs us towards the more difficult but vastly more worthwhile remedy of turning "have-nots" into "haves".

Never mind that an oppressed class which identifies its situation as normal rather then oppressive is bound to be more easily pacified than an oppressed class who can identify their lot in life as being substantially wrong.

The way to eliminate privilege is to expand or (in the event that it can't be expanded) to distribute it to everyone so that it ceases to be a privilege anymore. I think that contemporary discourse on the matter pretty consistently fails to acknowledge that.

On explaining privilege

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Sorry for baiting you, but...

Re: Sorry for baiting you, but...

Re: Sorry for baiting you, but...

Re: Sorry for baiting you, but...

Zero-sum games